Sapiens
by Bovineorbitor1
Summary: The sun slipped below the horizon, leaving red fingers caught in the clouds like an accusation. /We are Noah, after all./ AU from the time Allen tries to remove the Noah from Tyki.


_Disclaimer: I don't own anything. _

The last girl and the last reason to make this last for as long as I could  
First kiss and the first time that I felt connected to anything  
The weight of water, the way you told me to look past everything I had ever learned  
The final word in the final sentence you ever uttered to me was love

And I don't know where to look  
My words just break and melt  
Please just save me from this darkness

'Make this go on forever', Snow Patrol

1

_The Noah falls, scratching at every subconscious ledge on the way down, and bursts out of the back of his mind with such a vicious howl that, for a moment, he believes that either his skull or his eardrums have exploded too._

_And the rest, as long as it lasted, was far from silent. _

1

Family was the magic word here, pulling rank over the devastating tune of 'exorcist', even its deadly alliance with 'kill', or 'innocence', or 'heart'. Family was the name for them, the explanation, the last song. It was Noah or nothing.

Tyki was not family anymore.

Slung over the Earl's shoulder like a particularly lifeless rag doll, he doesn't seem to object to being an object of tragedy. Road hovers behind them. She is unchildlike, angles and curves not quite fitting together properly even though she's all healed up, and she is not concerned. Rather, she is surprised to learn that she is flat out terrified.

No-one is in character tonight: she, afraid – anger is the only thing that redeems her- he, human – and there's no redemption for that - and the Earl saving him anyway.

It was, had always been, Noah and nothing, with nothing in between, but he was Tyki. He was Tyki, the one, single exception she was prepared leave standing – except perhaps for Allen. He couldn't be nothing, because nothing was faceless and had no name.

She feels almost human, and Tyki isn't family any more.

1

When he woke up, the first feeling was relief. Not relief for anything in particular, he half dreamed half mused, just relief.

Warmth and wellbeing lay right under his skin, tickling faintly, percolating through from sleep to reality to sitting up and enquiring after the time, startling Road off her dreamy perch by the window. She shrieked with unladylike emphasis and flung her arms around his neck.

He didn't mind that much, then. She certainly seemed like she could use the contact, because immediately after she got a proper, too tight clasp in the way she liked best, she faltered. In fact, she loosened her hold uncertainly, almost trembled when he hugged her back in a small wave of affection for this smallest of his family members. She pulled away to examine his face, slim, unruly fingers wandering here and there, stringing through his hair.

"How do you feel?" She asked the usual question tersely, and although he wasn't yet infected by her unease he was undoubtedly puzzled by it.

"Never better, actually. I hadn't realised that was a side effect of being stabbed."

She didn't smile, instead putting a finger up to her lips, releasing him.

"Tyki…"

1

He is human. He doesn't know how to feel about that.

Feeling nothing hasn't worked so far, and so he gives up the attempt; tries instead to aggravate the twins when they come visit him. For once, it's like trying to strike a match on water, which just reminds him how much he needs to smoke.

He is a little pleased that they bothered to come at all – surprised and pleased, until he catches Debitto's eye and realises that they don't know how to feel either.

He isn't sure how he feels about that.

Without a conclusion to come to, he dumps the whole emotional tangle into 'confused' territory and pesters them for cigarettes. Debitto whacks him with the rather elderly grapes they brought. Everything is good again for a happy five minutes, and then the Earl comes and breaks it up.

The Earl smiles at him over his shoulder, and there is something Tyki doesn't like at all in his normal face, his normal eyes. He likes being told to stay quiet and get some more rest about half as much, so all told this hasn't been much of a day. Lulubell hasn't come by; neither, strangely, has Sherrill. He wouldn't admit to feeling down about that, but after all, they are family. They could at least bring him get well chocolates.

Even humans got get well chocolates from family.

1

Tyki watched the water cruise up the sides of the tub, hot and cold mingling into a dreary, soapy lukewarm. He stuck a toe in experimentally and winced, but heaved himself over the side anyway. It gave him an excuse to shiver.

His hair had grown out somewhat. This would lead to Road shaped trouble, but he hesitated to cut it off. She would no doubt yell at him for that, and currently he hadn't the patience.

Later, he crouched, damp and naked, with the plug pressing into one shaking fist, watching chilly liquid spiral away. It was probably symbolic, but he hadn't patience for that either.

Tyki was human. He was starting to know how he felt about that.

Lukewarm, and just alittlealot scared.

Finally he stood, taking in his own image from the bathroom mirror without either satisfaction or horror. He looked normal. Not commonplace, exactly – but - he was himself still, with only gentle changes. His eyes were a clear, light brown; almost amber, almost golden in a poor light. His skin was tanned dusky, neither the cream of his white side nor the grey of the Noah. He was an amalgamation of himself, though he didn't know if his reconstruction had used all the right pieces.

The crosses, ironically, had all but gone. There was only one slim reminder still engraved into his chest, and it wasn't even exactly where the exorcist had stabbed him. Allen Walker's signature had shifted to the left.

It crossed his heart. But he hoped to live.

Road entered silently – he knew he'd locked that door, but she had a habit of flowing cheerfully around such barriers, like a more sadistic form of vapour. He fumbled for a towel and what remained of his modesty, although he was certainly aware that she had no innocence left to scar. Knowledge didn't help him be comfortable being naked around her; he knew that sadism a little too well.

Today it made no showing. She gave him long enough to grasp the handle of decency before hugging him again, this time slower, more deliberate. It felt like the ending of something. It felt like goodbye, or I'm sorry, or the drift of smoke through rainfall.

He was patting her awkwardly, unable to grasp her properly while still keeping the towel up, and Road wished he wouldn't. There wasn't time for that. This was the moment - the minute, the second, the time - for him to hold her back properly, warmth more firmly surrounding her than even family could.

He didn't do it, although the one armed grip tightened gradually.

She reached up through soft air, feathered with moisture, and scratched a fingernail over the cross that marked his passing, replaced it with shallow red streams. He twitched a little, but let her gently cut him open.

"Road…"

1

She sat on the edge of his bed, maths textbook spread across her knees.

"Is it alright for you to be spending so much time here?" he asked mildly. "Not that I don't appreciate the attention, but I would have thought being bedridden would get me out of doing your homework for you."

"Nope," she sang back. "No excuses. Besides, this way you can focus better, Tyki-pon."

"Don't call me that," he said automatically. She smirked.

"Road…" he leaned back against the white, crisp fabric, contemplative as only Tyki could be.

"Yes, Tyki?" she answered. Her voice was oddly bland: wary, he thought.

"Do you enjoy it?" he asked. "The pretending? Going to school, the playacting with Sherrill? Pretending to be human."

"Yees," she said slowly – "Though schoolwork sucks."

He snorted.

"You know, it's starting to feel like a prison in here. The 'stay and rest', you or the Earl dropping by every five minutes, the bars on the windows…"

"There aren't any bars on the windows."

He snorted again, and chuckled. She stared first at her textbook, then at her feet.

"Haven't they taught you about metaphor there yet? Or were you just not listening?"

"Don't be impudent, Tyki-pon."

She let Mathematics for Terminally Slow Losers- or whatever it was called- drop to the floor, leaning up until they were nose to nose. His eyes met hers, laughing and unrepentant and just this side of amber.

He surprised her then, as he sometimes did, by initiating an embrace. It was presumably another tactic to avoid getting scolded, an alternative to being dismissive or simply running away.

She let the motives slide, just this once.

The Noah, on the whole, were not cuddly- just ask their victims- but there had been a great deal of hugging in the past few days. She'd even caught Debito and Jasdevi clinging to each other helplessly in one of the corridors. It seemed she was loosing the monopoly on physical affection.

But right now, in this current right now, she had one ex-noah burying his face in her shoulder to deal with, and so she set abstract thought aside. She lifted the tiny lights her hands could be and tried to stretch them over the darkness that was his back, but she was too small to reach properly, and had to settle for patting one shoulder blade, hanging herself around his neck like a lantern.

"I think I wanted this," he muttered. She shook her head, denying the confession. He couldn't have wanted this. No-one could want this. And Tyki, as she had decided, could never be no-one. But somehow she knew by the tightness in his grip that his mind had flown out the unbarred window to wherever his friends were, and that always produced something like guilt in him.

"You didn't," she assured him, absolving him of sin. "It just happened."

And maybe he didn't believe her – "Yeah, that's right…" – and maybe he wasn't even listening to her – "I can't go back, can I?" But she'd go on answering.

"You don't need them," she said, fiercely talking to the back of his head. "You've got me. Us."

"Yes." He pushed back and gave her a measuring look, and then closed newly brown eyes in a smile. "I do, don't I?"

The Earl, standing in the doorway, brushed away a tear.

1

He looked up in time to see the approaching blur, but not to actually do anything about it.

"My poor Tyki!" Sherrill exclaimed passionately, squeezing the arm his poor Tyki had thrust against his ribcage in a fair attempt at getting him off.

"Sherrill," his brother sighed redundantly, stabbing him with an elbow.

"How are you feeling?" demanded Sherrill. "I came right over to see you. Why weren't you more careful? And Road! Where is my daughter?"

"In the gardens," Tyki said.

Sherrill - paying no attention - turned his interest to the walls, in case Road had taken up camouflage. His brother examined him with very much the same motive. Did he? Didn't he?

Sherrill didn't know.

Tyki knew relief again, but it wasn't relief in its entirety. The twisted, masochistic desire to tell, to see the overbearing affection and the dusting of genuine worry melt off his brother's face like an avalanche, he knew that too.

"In the gardens," he said again, more clearly.

Sherrill beamed. "Well, I'll go fetch her. Wait here!"

The Camelot duo spent the rest of the evening perfecting their double act in annoying poor dear Tyki, who was eventually reduced to trying to smother Sherrill with a pillow whilst fighting off his tickling attempts _and _ignoring Road's hysterical laughter. Then the twins came to see what the fuss was about. Then Lero came to yell at them. Then all of them except the invalid tried to sit on Lero, who objected.

Lullubell condescended to drop by eventually and tell them to please be quiet, it was three o' clock at night, and the sane people were trying to sleep. Tyki realised that he had never properly appreciated Lulubell until that moment.

And if, just before leaving, Sherrill threw a glance back at his brother with something like doubt, Tyki wasn't looking.

The older man walked out in silence. Road, equally quiet at his side, patted his hand. They trotted gravely off until the child matriarch froze in her tracks, turned tightly on a whim and a heel and raced back to the room, just once.

She stuck her head back inside.

"Goodnight, Tyki." She said softly.

"Nrgg…"

"Right."

1

"Right." Tyki took an awkward semi-step, leaning heavily on the fence. Debitto and Jasbebi skipped fore and aft of him, calling out ribald, tender mockery. He appreciated the effort, just not everything else.

"C'mon Tyki!" Debitto hooted. "What's the matter? Arthritis getting you down?"

"Arthritus, hi!" giggled Jasdevi

The ex- noah of pleasure cursed softly and made a mild lunge at Debitto, allowing himself to topple to grass so that when the twins clustered around in derision-covered concern he could grab an ankle each and _yank._

They cursed much more extensively than he had. Louder, too.

1

"Now you're talking," Sherrill exclaimed happily.

"And walking," said Road. She was watching him with odd pride gleaming in her eyes, in that slightly unnerving way she had sometimes. He shrugged.

"Well, what did you expect?"

"Nothing less," she said, all satisfied.

Maybe they were making progress.

1

"_This can't last." The Earl looked at her over his glasses, his face normal, eyes normal, except for the tears._

_Why not? she thought. Why not?_

_1_

"Now that you're well enough to walk, maybe it would be nice for you to get out-world," the Earl mused. "Road, Debitto, Jasdevi. Take Tyki for a walk."

Tyki blinked at the peremptory orders, but couldn't deny that he would enjoy going out. The twins and Road, however, instantly burst into objections, also budding with excuses and blooming with pretexts. He was rather hurt.

"I don't want to," Road said finally, getting down to the heart of the matter. Tyki was even more hurt. The twins looked surprised at the backup.

"Go," said the Earl, without heat. The assembled Noah shivered.

They went.

Directed to the heart of a little town somewhere or other warm – Tyki wasn't even sure which continent they had ended up on – the four drifted aimlessly.

True aimlessness was new, strange, bewildering. Always before, there had been a goal, even if it wasn't a very magnetic one.

"What are we even doing here?" Debitto snapped, about five minutes into the stroll. It was a testament to his endurance that he'd made it even that long, tightening his hold on his smouldering. Tyki started out of his reverie: he had been wondering why exactly this place was so deserted.

"Beats me," he muttered, looking around. If they had to go out, why not somewhere a little more pleasant than this? It was just a run down old dump with a peculiar, insidious smell, like chronic sickness covered over with a fallacy of flowers. Maybe this was why Road had been reluctant to come.

She seemed to have brightened up since their arrival, enticed by the clanging sounds of rustic market just around what turned out to be more than several corners. The three men stumped in her wake, twins hardly more fluid than Tyki. He was almost moved to comment on their wonderfully enthusiasm, but managed to keep his teeth clenched together tight, in order to maintain their position in his gums.

The market turned out to be a dilapidated setting; locals few and far between and with a slight, desperate cadence to their jabbering that worried the ex-Noah of pleasure. They jabbered particularly at their visitors, one of them going so far as to take hold of his sleeve and stare – and cough – imploringly into his face. She looked sad and dreary and human, and she sounded terribly raspy.

He gave the woman some money, and she dissolved into tears, still with his sleeve entwined in her fingers. The other humans led her away, making a sad, dreary procession as they went. It wasn't long before the place was empty.

The Noah family stood in the deserted market place, feeling awkward. Debitto wanted to pass comment on the weirdness of humans, but didn't think adding 'present company accepted' would go down terribly well.

No-one spoke, or at least, not out loud. Tyki shivered again.

Road shook herself abruptly, like someone waking from a dream. "Let's go home."

They went.

After the heat of wherever it was that they had been, home was chilly.

1

"_We have to. My dear Road…"_

"_No!" She backed away, not far enough. _

"_I'll do it," she said fiercely, finally. "Don't you come near. I'll do it. I'll do it for him."_

"_How?"_

_1_

Tyki coughed.

Road winced.

Silence.

"I think I'm ill," he said.

Silence.

Cough!

"Maybe," said Road.

_Coughcough. _

He waited patiently for more sympathy. Though Road had not exactly been a goldmine of compassion lately, he was sure that if he continued sniffing and looking suitably pathetic, eventually she would crumble.

Probably.

"I'm sure you'll be fine, Tyki-pon," she said finally, turning abruptly and bouncing into his lap. "Just put your mind to it."

_Cough! Cough!_

Tyki sighed. She was a dry well when it came to empathising with other people's suffering, as was to be expected. Road wouldn't be Road if she was too easy to get through to.

She yanked on his hair playfully, confirming this line of thought.

"Talk to me, Tyki," she said.

_Cough!_

1

"It must be hard for humans, being so fragile," said the Earl, with what the rest of the family thought was remarkable lack of tact. They clamoured to drown the slip in a sea of excessive comment.

"That's quite some smoker's cough, Tyki!"

"You look like you got hit by a cart."

"A cart, hii!"

"A very heavy cart."

"My poor brother. Maybe I could procure some medicine for you?"

Tyki, who'd been miserably harking back to the times when Road had stubbornly paid no attention to him, flinched. This was attention alright, but none of it was sympathy.

"I'm not taking anything you give me, Sherrill," he croaked. This was important. Having a cold was bad enough, he didn't want to _die. _

He thumped a pillow back into place irritably.

1

The sheets had all turned red.

Some of that he was sure was down to the way his eyes had stopped working quite right. Some of it was probably due to the dark.

Some of it was definitely real. Quite real.

It amused him slightly how the others acted like the fortress he'd made with the luxuriously huge bed covering was impenetrable. They came and yelled at him through it.

He was surprisingly comfortable despite the coughing, propped up against the wall and waiting for the next family member to come and entertain him.

The sky had all turned red too. He could just see it if he laid his face flat and sideways against the wall and peeked through the gap between the sheets he had pulled over his head. Watching the sun go down reminded him of freedom, and the places he'd had it in.

"Tyki."

A wave of déjà vu struck him with all the force of a thousand raindrops, running through the gutters of his mind.

Another count.

She'd said his name more times in this past month than she had in the whole of their shared history. He rather thought he liked it, the newly solemn cadence, like a prayer.

"Road."

She crawled up under the tent of fabric, slipping inside easily and proving once and for all that his defences were for nothing.

"Hello."

"Hello."

He half expected her to say _nice place you got here_ in the same casual tone, but she refrained. It wouldn't really be her, anyway.

"What are you doing?" she asked instead. It was the first time he remembered her ever sounding genuinely innocent.

And the obvious answer; _dying,_ was something he didn't think he could fill with enough humour to make a socially acceptable response. He said:

"I don't know," instead, almost as honest.

She reclined next to him.

"Okay."

Stifled silence.

"I must have picked it up in that village," he said finally, didn't see her nod knowingly. "That woman."

She said: "That village was almost destroyed by an epidemic some weeks ago. Only a shell and a few dying humans remain."

He said: "Oh."

She huddled into herself, chin resting on her knees.

"Sorry, Tyki," she added shortly, remembering almost tears and almost pleading and the Duke, implacable.

"That's alright, Road."

The sun slipped below the horizon, leaving red fingers caught in the clouds like an accusation, standing in for the voice which he wouldn't employ. Her head slipped to his shoulder, breathing in the newborn dusk. He sighed.

"We are Noah, after all."

And in all the essentials, they still were.

1

She can hear his heartbeat.

Because he will not move – has not moved since her almost admission, this is the only indication he will give her. Even the coughing stopped a few hours ago; almost she wishes she had enquired as to what strain of sickness it was that they were killing him with, the knowledge would give her a timeline.

She will do without her timeline. It would seem unfair to him to know and not tell him, and she can't tell him.

There have been loses before, of course. Skin was the most recent. Skin, who never told her, on the very few occasions when she'd offer him a careless lollypop as an offering to the god of family harmony, that there was such a thing as _too_ sweet. She supposes that the tears will come, for all of them.

She wants to cry for him now, herself and not the Noah, but the saltwater tides will not rise to her eyes on bidding. She hums for him instead, a sort of lullaby. He relaxes a little.

That is the only time one of her songs has relaxed someone, instead of making them inexplicably nervous. How she loves this boy…He chuckles softly as though he has heard the thought, proving at least that he is conscious.

"Another, please."

_This_ is definitely a lullaby, one she remembers vaguely as something her own parents had used to sing. Or perhaps she was confusing her memories, already blotted with time and deliberate deletion, and it had been the Earl singing, or even this one beside her.

Tyki had used to sing her Spanish lullabies when she begged him especially persistently. They were the only thing she knew that could change her own dreams, fill them with shapes and sounds she hadn't herself selected. It was a novel experience for Noah of dream.

The stuff of sleep he magics up for her is never anything like her own conjurations. She will miss it, probably more than she guesses now, and maybe her victims will scream harder the longer she goes without remembering that not every dream is a nightmare.

Road doesn't believe in returning favours, though. Besides, she doesn't have the power to give her gift to the kind of sleep he is falling into, should she ever change.

She can't give him heaven.

It's more than she can do to say 'goodnight' when he goes, and pray.

1

"Hey, you in there?" This is Debitto. He sounds somehow and uncharacteristically fragile.

"Yes?"

"Are you awake?"

"No?"

This is Tyki. He sounds raspy. Debitto huffs with annoyed relief.

"Then stop sleeping-talking, bastard."

Road doesn't resent the intrusion, and she is sure Tyki doesn't either, but the twins don't plat copy-cat in crawling under the blankets which are his last fortifications. There's no room left, and too much dignity.

Anyway, even on the other side of the room and out of sight she can feel the void of words. Close to, the silence would surely be deafening. It is unfortunately an accepted fact that neither of the Noah of bonds can sing, so her selected option of humming is forever closed to them.

Instead Debitto mutters "dammit" almost inaudibly under his breath, and they stand around aimlessly for a while. When she pokes her head out from the sheets to check up on them they are slumped together in a corner, fast asleep.

Tyki chuckles again.

No-one else and nothing more comes to disturb the static in the room. He understands that, while she is grateful for it. This is enough for now.

"Was it the Duke?" he asks suddenly, into the ear of quiet. She catches her breath.

"Was what the Duke?" she almost says, but can't quite get out.

"Yes."

"Alright."

That is close enough to forgiveness to sooth without hurting. It gives her the fortitude to ask one last question.

"Tyki…"

"Yes?"

"If it were you, would you have killed me for him?"

"No."

He sounds sure.

"Why?"

There is no answer for that, although she had been half expecting one. He ruffles her hair instead, and lies back.

"Goodnight, Road."

He smiles at her through half closed eyes, lazy.

She waits until the very last second to say it, and she smiles around the words like a young-old psychopathic bitch who really doesn't care.

"Goodnight, Tyki."

Morning dawns seven minutes too late.

111

AN: Yeah. First D. Gray Man fic, so suggestions and the pointing out of glaring mistakes welcome.


End file.
